Mad Men's Costume Designer Janie Bryant Creates Her First Wedding Dress

Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant needn’t worry about staying busy now that the AMC series is wrapping up. The Emmy award winner just wrapped designing her second shoe collaboration with Shoes of Prey and has an upcoming dress collection with the super tailored fashion label Black Halo due out in July. Yet one of the things she is most excited about is designing a bespoke wedding gown for her very close friend, fashion publicist Shana Honeyman, who is getting married at the throwback style estate of Frank Sinatra in Palm Springs in May.

“When Shana and I were first talking about her wedding, I said to her, ‘I envision you being a queen. You’re a queen of the estate.’ It really just started from there,” Bryant explains.

The bride-to-be’s must-have wedding dress details include a mermaid style silhouette, an open neckline, and a fitted waist. But the pièce de résistance, as seen in this exclusive sketch (above), is a dramatic cape fit for a scene stealing entrance. “A cape is very modern, yet it is something that harkens back to the past as well,” says Bryant of the embellished lace cape the bride will wear over her silk duchess satin gown when she walks down the aisle.

But Honeyman’s gown isn’t Bryant’s first foray into designing bridal wear. “When I was in design school, that was my senior project,” recalls Bryant (pictured below).

“I designed a wedding gown and all the bridesmaid dresses. That’s what I really wanted to do when I got out of design school. I wanted to do bridal,” she says.

Since then, the costume designer has created gowns for her agent and her older sister, but there is one wedding dress she wishes she had a hand in designing. “When my husband Peter and I got married, I was in production of Mad Men so I wanted the planning to involve minimal stress. But when I look back on it, I really wish I had the time to design my own wedding dress because I know exactly the gown it would be. If I could, I would walk around in a wedding gown every day!”

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